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Actress In Recovery To GRACE

by Marisa Vitali
(New York)

While honing my acting skills in class, I was inspired by a teacher I was studying with who gave us a Call To Action. We ALL have a story to tell...So tell it!

I had always written my story, about how I started using heroin, in many different forms; from stream of consciousness, a play, a screenplay even as a short story but I always stopped at the same place. I was never able to see the ending...

After receiving the Call To Action, I woke up the next day and started to write. The story just flowed out of my pen, I couldn’t keep up....I couldn’t write fast enough. The story that was flowing was not about my active addiction, but about my first year clean in recovery. I realized THAT was the most difficult time for me. A time I had to face the truth of what my life had become without a drug to hide behind. I also found, that family and friends, didn’t want to talk about it and acted as if nothing had happened. There was an unspoken expectation that because I was not using everything was “FINE.”

I felt like a turtle without a shell, raw and emotionally exposed. This was the story I wanted to tell in the film Grace. Anyone can watch a film and learn how to shoot a bag of dope or smoke a crack pipe. I wanted to tell a story of hope and recovery and bridge a gap between addicts and non-addicts to start that conversation of recovery. There is something to be said about how we can all be a little more compassionate for one’s struggles to overcome against all odds.

If I can reach one person with this film, I feel my job of being of service is complete.

"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened." - Matthew 7:7-8